


waking the dreamer

by kythen



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Events With Sci-Fi Elements, Dreams, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 04:42:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13826718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kythen/pseuds/kythen
Summary: Daichi dreams.





	waking the dreamer

**Author's Note:**

> For this [ask](http://kythen.tumblr.com/post/171381765369/get-meeee-please-for-the-writing-prompt-i-love).
>
>> Prompt:
>> 
>> _Leave a “Get Me” in my ask, and I will write a drabble about one character saving another._

In a dream:

“You’re new here.”

Daichi blinks. “I didn’t know there was a _here_ to be new to.”

The man shrugs, a languid ripple of his shoulders against the stark white background enveloping the both of them. Daichi knows this is a dream, having had the experience of being caught in a dream so many times before, but this is the first time he has seen this particular person in his dreams—he thinks. There is something awfully familiar about that shrug and the smirk that follows, lighting up his features under a floppy fringe and a wild explosion of hair, but when Daichi wracks his brain—or his dream-brain—he comes up empty.

The man sits and there is a table and two chairs, face-to-face, now in his dream. The man gestures for Daichi to sit, and strangely enough, he does. Whose dream is this anyway?

“So,” the man says, leaning an elbow on the table and resting his chin in his hand, “tell me about yourself.”

Daichi blinks again. “I didn’t know this was an interview.”

The man laughs and it is a terrible laugh, ranking amongst one of the ugliest laughs Daichi has ever heard. It makes Daichi want to laugh too, like the sound of the man’s laugh has always been a cue for Daichi to start laughing. Like the shrug and the smirk, it is intensely familiar, so much that it borders on nostalgic.

Daichi looks at the man again, harder this time, wracking his brain and searching his memories furiously and coming up with... nothing again. A furrow appears between his brows. He feels like he should know this man.

“Oh no,” the man corrects with a smile once he finally stops laughing. “Think of it as a date.”

“It’s an unusual place for one.”

“Is it? Believe it or not, I’ve had more unusual.”

“I can’t imagine a place more unusual than the inside of my own head,” Daichi says dryly. “For obvious reasons.”

The man looks surprised, his eyes lighting up with pleasure. “Oh, very good. You know that this is a dream then.”

“I’ve had too many of them not to know,” Daichi says, recalling a particular series of eventful nightmares that had plagued him during high school.

High school?

“You’ve always been an avid dreamer, in all senses of that word,” Kuroo says and there is fondness in his voice that Daichi doesn’t remember from high school when he had been captain of the Karasuno Volleyball Team and Kuroo had been captain of the Nekoma Volleyball Team and all they had was rivalry between them. “Do you know who you are then?”

“Of course I do,” Daichi says defensively. Sawamura Daichi, male, age... age... How long has it been since he met Kuroo?

“How old are you, darling?” Kuroo prompts gently when Daichi falters for too long, rummaging through the wreck of his head for answers that he knows aren’t there. His head hasn’t served him well at all during his time here and it is unsurprising when he finds that he doesn’t know, doesn’t know as much as he thought he had.

Daichi looks up at Kuroo and there is a building panic in him that starts from the centre of his chest and radiates outwards to every part of him. His head hurts. His eyes are prickling. He doesn’t know.

Kuroo takes his hand, interlinking their fingers on the table, and the ring on his fourth finger is cold against Daichi’s skin, clinking against the matching ring on Daichi’s fourth finger. They had gotten the rings sometime during their sixth or seventh year together after life had finally quietened down for them to say "yes" and “I do” to each other. Daichi had been twenty-five then. It had been their seventh year together after they had found each other in university again.

He doesn’t think he is twenty-five anymore. He feels so much older. Looking at Kuroo across the table, he doesn’t seem twenty-five either. There are lines on his face, laugh lines and a slight crinkling at the corner of his eyes when he smiles. Daichi has been with him long enough to see them come into existence, had smoothed his fingers over them and laughed into Kuroo’s hair when Kuroo had whined about them, the vain cat that he is.

Kuroo squeezes his hand, his smile soft and pained as he says, “I need you to come back to me, Daichi. I can’t grow any older without you.”

“Where am I?” Daichi asks, his voice coming out as barely more than a whisper. He is almost afraid to ask.

“Dreaming. Sleeping,” Kuroo answers, his grip tight on Daichi’s hand. “For far too long. It’s time for you to wake up now.”

\---

The first sound that he hears is an incessant beeping, surrounding him on all sides. Bright white light blinds him the moment he opens his eyes and the second sound he hears is his own groan, dry and withered at the back of his throat. Like dreaming, Daichi is intimately familiar with waking up, and this has to be the worst waking up ever.

He shuts his eyes but the light bleeds through his closed eyelids, leaving stars on his vision. _Someone, please turn off the light,_ he wants to say but the words don’t come out, jumbled up in his brain and caught in the mess of thoughts there. His head hurts, even more intensely than it had in his dream. His back throbs like a bruise had decided to lodge there forever. Someone is holding his hand.

Daichi squeezes the hand in his and long, slim fingers squeeze back, overly warm and clammy in his grip. Daichi turns his head just enough so that he is facing the side and opens his eyes a crack.

Light floods into his vision again, overwhelming bright and blinding, but he is used to it now, marginally, and beyond the light he sees—

“Hey,” Daichi manages to croak out, somehow.

“Hey,” Kuroo says and he is on the verge of tears, lying on a bed joined to Daichi’s. There are electrode patches plastered to his head, his hair swept up in a cloth band to keep his forehead bare and like that, Daichi almost doesn't recognise him. Almost.

If Daichi had to make a guess, he would guess that Kuroo's new look has something to do with the new technology making waves in the media, now in its trial stage all across the country. The cure for coma, they called it, using dreams to stimulate comatose patients into waking up. Waking from the long dream, others called it, or waking the dreamers. All it took was a patient, an active participant, and one shared dream between them. Daichi had never dreamt that it would be used on him.

“Welcome back, Daichi,” Kuroo continues and he gets choked up there, tears spilling down his cheek and soaking the pillow under his head.

Daichi turns and it is an effort and a half to roll over and lift his arm, to get his hand high enough to reach Kuroo’s face. His fingers brush Kuroo’s cheek clumsily, his thumb finding a corner of Kuroo’s eye, and Daichi smiles as he wipes Kuroo’s tears. Kuroo has always been sentimental but he has gotten much more so with age and he is an ugly crier as much as he is an ugly laugher. Daichi loves him so much.

"I'm back," Daichi murmurs hoarsely, resting his fingers against Kuroo's face like they belong there—and they do, just as much as Daichi belongs at Kuroo's side into sickness, old age, and perhaps even death. "I'm not letting you grow old by yourself, Tetsu."

**Author's Note:**

> _[sleep it out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCB05zXlLAs) _
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> This was actually a scrapped plot idea I had for a zine submission but I went with another idea instead so it gets to live in the form of this fic. (I hope I get in.) Thank you, awzelles, for the perfectly timed ask prompt.
> 
> Find me here: [tumblr](http://kythen.tumblr.com) / [twitter](http://twitter.com/catcrowcalls)


End file.
